Curiosity

Definition: Wanting to know more. I want to know more.

Motto: "I seek out situations where I gain new experiences without getting in my own or other people's way."¹

"So how do we make people intellectually curious? We do not need to, they already are. More accurately, they used to be. You see this curiosity is in children. They are learning machines asking questions all day, trying to figure out everything." - Sven Schnieders

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The Strengths Spotlight Podcast Series: Listen to the Institute of Positive Education descriptors of the strengths that include integration strategies.

What it Looks Like and How to Encourage:

• Going deeper due to one’s interest

• Asking questions

• Seeking insights from others

• Support with growth mindset language and strategies

• Respond to questions with guiding questions

• Developing and using a self-talk algorithm around how to engage one’s curiosity

• Promote a language around curiosity and well-being

• Situational analysis (Teachable Moments)

Teacher Strategies to Personally Strengthen Their Curiosity:

• Grow awareness of your strengths by making them more visible. Depending upon your learning style and preferred modality, choose tools from your instructional toolkit to apply to yourself. Examples: Audio Recording (have a friend interview you to record your very own "strengths podcast"|Concept Mapping|Outlining|Sketchnoting. Find ways to show how you combine strengths in some situations while also connecting to your talents/abilities, skills, interests, and values.

• Use the CL construct of model, celebrate and enable to develop some personalized strategies.

Character Lab Curiosity Teaching Strategies and Tips: How to offer age-appropriate versions of the strategies? Note: There are dozens and dozens of tips from Character Lab. These choices are filtered for elementary school and practicality to bring this strength into the culture of one's classroom.

• Build Connections for Classrooms

• Compound Interest

• Finding Flow

• Roots & Shoots

• The Element of Surprise

• The Power of Questions

• Use WOOP to set goals supported by Character Strengths. (WOOP Worksheet from Character Lab. A more scaffolded worksheet.) Grades 3-5 lesson. WOOP App: Android | IOS

• Character Day - Find ways to participate and elaborate on the activities offered for this annual event.

• Classroom Curiosity Corner - A physical and/or virtual place where the classroom learning community posts questions and wonders.

• Curiosity Calendar - Choose a month to post a daily curiosity activity for everyone to try. Here is a kindness example for February.

• Curiosity Pursuit - Building on Google 20% time, develop a mechanism for students to pursue their interests through research questions and plans to eventually show what they learn. Look at the possibility of employing ICL Project Plans that students work on outside of the regular curriculum. A "curiosity pursuit" project can be a longer-term project.

• Genius Time - There are various approaches to giving students time to apply their curiosity in pursuing a question they wish to answer. Look to design a way to have students inquire, research, and report their learning back in a creative way to the class. Here is one resource to help students engage Character Strengths during their creative time.

• Growing Curiosity from Six Seconds - Adapt this lesson to your needs.

• Inward-Outward ³ - Think of ways to be curious internally for your own wellbeing. Think of ways to express curiosity outward to benefit others. Example: In- Go for a nature walk and engage all of your senses. Out- Be an active listener who engages others with thoughtful questions.

• Lesson Databases - Find lessons at the Heart-Mind Online resource site provided by the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. Find lessons at the Greater Good in Education resource site provided by the Greater Good Science Center (University of California - Berkeley).

• Questioning Websites - Go down the page to find the website section to review the list of resource sites.

• Sketchnoting to Paint the Strength Picture - Guide your students to make visible their self-understanding of how they currently engage with each strength. A secondary activity is to have your students sketch out new ways they can exercise each strength. We know that going from thinking about ideas to then making them visible often leads to taking action with the ideas. The first step to this strategy is to teach your students about sketchnoting. You will find applications of this tool across all areas of your curriculum. :) Students can take pictures of their sketches to upload them to SeeSaw to then explain their thinking.

• Strength Chart - Teachers have lots of ways to bring strengths into the language and culture of their classrooms. A teacher at one of my schools connected to the school's core values by having the names of students on small sticky labels that he stuck to the core values poster. He would place the student's name by the value on the chart in the following ways that are adapted here for the strengths. One technique is for students who want the class to support his/her effort to grow strengths to have his/her name placed beside the designated strength(s). A second strategy is for teachers to verbally highlight students who are applying their strengths at the moment in class. The teacher then puts the student’s name by the strength on the chart.

• Superhero Creation - Challenge your students to create a superhero who maximizes this strength. One approach is to have your students draw a picture of the character with a biography that describes how the superhero uses the strength in his/her life. You can provide categories such as physical, intellectual (thinking), emotional and social as to how the superhero demonstrates the strength. This activity could take the form of playing cards that students then create games around.

• Talk Moves - Here are some sample questions and a video that one can use to help students ask each other questions to go deeper in their understanding when speaking with others.

  • What made you think that?

  • How did you get that answer?

  • Why is that important?

  • What do mean by …?

  • What is your evidence?

  • How do you know that?

  • So you are saying …?

  • Can you say more about …?

• Think - Puzzle - Explore Thinking Routine - This routine can become a part of the class culture when approaching new topics. It also can be taught as a personal algorithm for students to engage when they feel they really know a lot about a topic. Change the “you” in the questions to “I” and maybe add a fourth question of “Who can I talk to to get another take (perspective) on this?”.

• What Makes You Say That? - The teacher can model this routine and line of questioning to help students seek to understand as they learn perspective-taking. It also can be taught to support active listening for students to use this question in their social interactions.

• Other possibilities - Curiosity Superhero marketing design projects, Student-created videos highlighting curiosity stories, high school IB students using CAS time to produce age-appropriate videos for ES students answering questions of “What is curiosity? What does it look like in action?”, older student buddies and their ES partners from time to time to share creativity engagement efforts, incorporate into co-curricular activities like field trips, after school activities, assemblies, etc.

Grade(s) Specific Teaching Strategies: The following ideas are offered as jumping-off points for teachers to build from and adapt to their needs.

EC-K>

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• Storybook readings, digital media, and share time by teachers and students to build understanding.

• Use the prompt “how did we investigate/demonstrate curiosity in this activity?”

• Use visuals of toolkits and tools engaging language of creating our "strength toolkits" with strengths as tools.

1-3>

• Curiosity wall in each classroom.

• Grades 1-2> possibly doing some storybook readings and use of digital media that involve curiosity. Eventually could lead to students writing their own storybooks about curiosity.

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• Use the prompt “ how did we investigate/demonstrate curiosity in this activity?”

• Use visuals of toolkits and tools engaging language of creating our "strength toolkits" with strengths as tools.

• Weekly Curiosity Seesaw Journal post: will need to develop prompt and potential categories for students to draw a picture of and/or take a photo of their curiosity in action. They then voice-record their response.

• Work with students' ideas to learn and strengthen their curiosity.

4-5>

• Adapt the ESPRAT+G construct of questions in your social studies units.

• Ask the following: "How can we move from curiosity to action?". Scaffold an activity or two that guides students to think about ways they can act upon their curiosity to seek information and/or create.

• Curiosity and People: Design social interactions where students can practice asking questions of others. Provide guidance to overcome shyness and the opposite when asking too many personal questions.

• Curiosity wall (and possibly a virtual one via Padlet) in each classroom.

• Journal - Google Doc or paper version. The teacher provided prompts and in time work with students to create new prompts. Could be a section of the portfolio.

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• See if Edward de Bono’s Six Hats Thinking can be adapted in some form.

• Use the prompt “ how did we investigate/demonstrate curiosity in this activity?”

• Work with students' ideas to learn and strengthen their curiosity.

Learning About Curiosity:

Websites>

• 100 Awesome Essential Questions

• A More Beautiful Question

• Character Lab

• Questioning Toolkit

• Right Question Institute for Teachers

Books>

• A Curious Mind by Brian Glazer

• Cultivating Good Minds by Jason Baehr

• The Hungry Mind by Susan Engel

Parent Engagement:

• Ask someone to video record the strength in action and publicize the efforts via social media (#----------) and the school website.

• Family Tree of Strengths: Provide parents with definitions and what strengths can look like in action. Provide a family tree graphic organizer with space for names and the individual’s main strengths. Offer prompts to guide parents to explain how family members and earlier generations lived specific strengths.

• Have students take their character cards home to teach their parents about their strengths.

• Share the Right Question Institute resources page for parents.

• Strength-based Parenting - Share with your parents the Dr. Lea Waters website which includes resources and information on her book. Here is an article to help with your understanding of strength-based parenting.

• Teachers send specific reminders to have family talks around the curious reflection products the students produce.

• Teachers offer ideas for parents to share with their children weekly examples of their experiences of curiosity.

• Use our various communication pathways to inform parents of their children strengthening their curiosity.

• VIA Strengths Survey: Send parents information about the strengths and the English language Strengths Survey that they can take. The results can offer a discussion starting point for families.

Character Lab Research References

Character Lab Image Source

¹ Niemiec, R. M., & McGrath, R. E. (2019). The power of character strengths: appreciate and ignite your positive personality. Cincinnati, OH: VIA Institute on Character.

² Embedding Character Strengths. Institute of Positive Education. With permission.

³ Niemiec, Ryan M., and Neal H. Mayerson. The Strengths-Based Workbook for Stress Relief: a Character Strengths Approach to Finding Calm in the Chaos of Daily Life. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2019.